Keys to Properly Exposing a Photograph Intro: The 3 Kings

16022012

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from readers who are remarkably gifted photographers but they still rarely venture away from the automatic settings on the camera. I spent the first part of my “professional” career using automatic and sport modes. Modern cameras are very smart so these modes can help you get acquainted and comfortable while you’re learning how to compose a good picture, but, smart as your camera may be, chances are it isn’t very creative.

I found that when I went to events, or took pictures of my friends, I got great pictures. They looked clean most of the time, if they didn’t I just deleted them. Unfortunately, when I got passionate, I learned that it was hard to take a really creative picture. I controlled the composition, but the rest was really out of my hands. Sometimes I wanted a dark picture that felt really deep and heavy and wound up with something so bright it hurt my eyes.

I wish this one had been darker

Sometimes I wanted a bright happy picture only to see something that looked like an illustration of an Emily Dickinson poem.

I wish this image had been lighter

I resolved to learn how to be the master of my own fate, or at least my own exposure. After sifting through countless difficult articles and technically intense websites I learned that exposure, is basically governed by three things on a modern digital camera: f/stop, shutter speed, and ISO.

Properly Exposed

Adjusting each of these can help you make your photos brighter, or darker. Making an image darker is usually “free.” That is to say you don’t get a lot of negative quality impact if you want a darker image. Brighter images are going to cost you though. Here’s a simple description of the “3 Kings.”

Shutter speed, which can also be called exposure time, is how long the shutter stays open. The longer your shutter is open, the more light it lets in, the brighter your image. The “price” is that if your shutter is open and anything moves, you can see the motion in your image in the form of a blur. If it’s a kid running across a field, the kid gets blurry. If your shooting something freehand (not on a tripod,) your hands will move a little, so the camera moves a little, so everything gets a little blurry. We’ll talk a bit more about shutter speed in the next part.

F/stop is a source of confusion and distress for many learning photographers. There are complicated formulas, charts, and diagrams. But for now, here’s the simplest explanation I can offer: A lower f/stop means your aperture (the hole your light comes through) stays larger, and a higher f/stop means it closes more. So, the advantage of a low f/stop is a bigger hole which, you guessed it, lets more light in. The “price” here is a narrow depth of field, I’ll explain more about this and a few of the limitations of f/stop in part 2.

ISO is a rating for “film speed.” It was a system that rated how sensitive film was to light. It basically means the same thing to us in the digital photography age. Increase your ISO and your sensor gets more sensitive to light. This means, your images get brighter. The trade-off here is you now have a hyper sensitive filter that records noise. We’ll talk more about ISO and noise in part 3.

I talk about Shutter Speed next, to view that post, click here!! This post has been a bit out of my norm and definitely geared toward more serious photographers. I’m just testing the waters here and I really want to hear from my readers about how you felt so don’t pull any punches. 🙂 I would love to hear your feedback in the comments or on Twitter! If you enjoyed this post, consider clicking a share button below to let your friends know.

I’m glad this was helpful. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while because I remember how long it took me to really work it all out on my own with mostly technical articles as references.

Good explanation of the fundamentals of exposure. Another way to look at f-stops is this: the lower the f-stop number, the less of the image is in focus. The higher the number, the more that is in focus (in terms of depth of field). And you’re right, proper exposure is a triad of concepts that every photographer eventually has to come to terms with. Thanks for taking the time to share this.

Thank you! This is exactly what I’ve been working with for the past few weeks. I’ve been changing my ISO, aperture and shutter speed. I’m just glad I’m not taking photos of a bird, because they’d be gone before I got the right settings! At least a flower stays in one place! 😉 Keep up the great posts!

Like others above, this is a useful post. I guess much of the confusion lies with the use of film camera terms on digital cameras. I grew up with film, and you had to learn about film speed and correct exposure if you wanted to get any result worth printing. The costs concentrated your mind, and you took time to get to know your camera. A modern digital has so many options. This post helps to focus on the 3 fundamentals.
One idea that might help on F/stops. You can make a basic film camera with a pin hole. Make the hole larger and the film ‘exposures’ more quickly with the same light, so shutter speed has to be faster. The lower the light level [darker scene] the larger ‘hole’ you need.
Depth of field is harder to understand, but great when you master it. Especially for portraits, picking people out from a crowd.

The best advice I have read recently is to get to know you camera really well, use it every day if possible. This will increase your confidence in the heat of the moment.

One tip is to use the Auto or Program settings initially and note the F/Stop and Shutter speed that camera suggests before switching to Manual. Also you can go back through your photos and read the data captured. This will show you the F/Stops, Shutter speeds and ISO used. This way you get use to the numbers.

And if this all sounds very confusing, just stick with Auto and progress to Program. Composition is key to any great shot.

Thanks for the tips and feedback. I might have to work some of those points and suggestions into one of the follow up posts. I appreciate you stopping by and taking the time to comment in so much detail

“Composition is key” – I agree, without good composition the technical aspects cannot save a poor picture. But can good composition compensate for poor technical aspects? Not sure that I know the answer to this.

In my opinion, photography elements can’t compensate for each other. Poor exposure takes away from the overall quality of a picture. It may still have some appeal due to exceptional composition, but the effect is lessened by an obvious mistake on the part of the photographer.

I was definitely afraid of venturing from Auto for the first few weeks with my DSLR. After learning about exposures and how the camera actually functions, I’ve never gone back to the Auto function! Great post, you explained it well!

When I got my first camera with manual controls I took a basic photography class in order to understand my camera better. It was a point-and-shoot camera with manual controls, fancy for a point-and-shoot but nothing compared to a SLR. The instructor was adamant about using manual mode so that is what I learned. I am so glad I learned manual first because when I finally got a DSLR I didn’t have a huge learning curve…at least in manual mode. Now I need to learn how to better use the “3 Kings” so that I can creatively expose my images to get the mood right. Great post.

I’m in the same boat as so many other, new dslr, taking a course, we’ve covered the iso and are now on the Aperture settings, even though I’ve understood the reasons so often I get a blurred shot and it annoys the hell out of me!! What am I doing wrong after all the camera is selecting the shutter speed so it should be fine….Aghhhh I WILL persevere!!! Looking forward to following your posts…I shall reblog…there must be so many people out there who’d appreciate it. Thank you.

Sometimes the shutter speed the camera selects will care a lot more about the exposure than motion blur, after all, the camera doesn’t know you’re taking a picture of something moving. Try shooting in shutter priority or see if you can set a minimum shutter speed to freeze action. Hope this helps and thanks for re-blogging!

Very clearly explained. I know very little about photography and when I start to read technical articles I invariably lose interest because it gets too confusing for my tiny mind, but this was really helpful and easy to understand, thank you.

You’re welcome, I’m glad it was an easy read for you. I know the feeling, as soon as a photography article starts to feel like a pointless game of listen to all the cool useless stuff I know I go back to browsing pictures 🙂

Good information. For the past several months I have purposely taken my camera off auto and worked on exposure using either aperture or shutter priority. Last week I even used the manual mode and my images came out pretty good. The more you shoot the easier it gets.

[…] per bulb! Gelli Galanthus nivalis, and golden Luzula sylvatica aurea. Finally a thank you to Arley who has a photography blog in America, which is well worth following. He has very generously given […]

Thanks for the article.. I struggle with putting the 3kings together.. I understand each separately.. but..I feel like I have a block to putting them together.. I’ve been using aperature.. trying to work my way off auto..but sometimes.. it’s still over exposed.. not sure if it’s me or the camera.. 🙂
Btw.. thanks for the blog follow…it’s encouraging..
keep up the great work!!

You’re welcome, I debated on doing a “put it all together” article but so much of that is just getting the feel for it. If you have your f/stop where you want it and are still getting over-exposed try running up your shutter speed though. Good luck, just keep playing around with it!

[…] quality, especially when it felt like I was following all the technical rules about focus and exposure. Frustrated, I was continually putting my camera on the shelf, then taking it down, then putting it […]

Very helpful. I find f/stop more cumbersome on my digital, as it seems so hard to adjust. I’ve got ISO down, white balance reigned in, no options for shutter speed on my camera-now what I really want is to figure out how to get really rich color in my shots-so it looks like it had just rained even though I took it in the desert. Got any tips for that?

Have you played around with HDR at all? You may also be able to do a lot of what you want in post processing (Photoshop) but I suggest shooting in raw if you’re going to edit much. I’ll try to do some HDR work soon 🙂

[…] I had to take a few pictures to get this shot the way I wanted. I have been cheating a bit lately. I have left my ISO set on auto so that I can do what I want with the f/stop and shutter speed then let the camera do the hard work. Fortunately, I haven’t lost my touch so the second frame here came out the way I wanted. The camera got a bit confused with the extreme lights and darks so I had to take over. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, the camera is very smart but it’s not particularly creative. If f/stop, shutter speed, and ISO are Greek to you, I have an excellent (if I do say so myself) blog post about it here. […]

[…] A simple fun exercise is to play around with the settings on your camera and see what happens. The better educated you become, the more often “what happens” will be really cool. If you aren’t familiar with terms like “shutter speed” or “f/stop” a legend in the photography world wrote a post about it here. […]

[…] A simple fun exercise is to play around with the settings on your camera and see what happens. The better educated you become, the more often “what happens” will be really cool. If you aren’t familiar with terms like “shutter speed” or “f/stop” a legend in the photography world wrote a post about it here. […]

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I came up through film….Learned an f-stop from shutter speed quickly…..I think it’s a shame that those coming up through digital don’t learn the same……at least most that have been set on auto forever don’t know the difference, which as we know makes all the difference in the world in your photographs.
Jim Crowley

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